Polari’s editor announces a new arts festival, Qr, explains where Polari is going next and why it is no longer publishing as a website magazine.

On the 3rd of December 2014, to mark its 6th birthday, Polari Magazine enters a new stage of its history. No longer will the website be updated with new articles purely because the way that we use the internet has changed, and the way that people obtain information from it has evolved. The idea of a magazine website is not the same as it was even 3 years ago, when Polari relaunched with a new look and build. In-depth articles and lengthy reviews are, more and more, suited to different mediums. The evolution of the tablet and the Kindle, as well as that of the smartphone, has altered the way that information is disseminated and read. Where printed magazines once were, the tablet and the Kindle now are – but the website is somewhere else. And so Polari Magazine, which has always been delivered as a website, equally needs to evolve. That said, the content from the last six years, content of which I am really proud, will be maintained as an archive as this process of evolution occurs.

As an arts and culture publication, Polari has been involved in a variety of on-the-ground projects and worked with a host of creative talents. The first stage of its latest evolution is the announcement of a very different arts festival, Qr, which will launch in October 2015. (You can visit qrfest.com right now.) Qr, like Polari Magazine, is intended to be a high-end, real alternative on the festival circuit, with the aim of exploring queer culture in a way that makes it stand out from its contemporaries.

The first play produced under the Polari banner, In The Life: A History of Polari, played at the St James Theatre in June 2013. As a result of that play we worked with one of its stars, Champagne Charlie, and the broadcasting company Pup Ltd, to create a video of one of the featured songs, ‘Bona Eke’. The video and the song will be released for digital download on the 8th of December. It’s a spell-binding performance by Champagne Charlie, and an exceptional video from Pup’s Daniel Hall. And it’s a taste of what you can expect from the future of Polari. 

For its six years, Polari Magazine has been run as a community project and put together wholly in the time lent by its founders and contributors. It has been run on the sheer energy of those invested in the project with no external financial input. Then, it was never intended to be a product, but rather a real alternative to the litany of soulless lifestyle magazines and websites whose ends are sacrificed to commercial needs. That was achieved through finding a team of exceptional contributors without whom these high aims would never have been met. It is sad that we’ve struggled to get the support of key figures in the community, and that our content was not shared on social networks by such groups, barring a few notable exceptions.

In an era of information overload, and the punchy immediacy of social networks, a website needs quick fire stories, and the extensive use of hyperbole to catch a reader’s attention. “And you won’t believe what happens next…” This is not what Polari is about and so it is time to refocus. As well as the on-the-ground work with arts festival Qr, we’ll be looking for a publisher interested in running Polari Magazine as a digital and paper quarterly. It is the medium to which it truly belongs – not the fleeting world of the web, but the storehouse of our culture that can be read, and can travel, anywhere.

Andrew Darley spoke with Lou Rhodes of the long-standing band Lamb about their rebirth, space and their ability to change their own path.

 (Click images to enlarge)

In 2009, after a five year hiatus Lou Rhodes and Andy Barlow regrouped as their much loved and reverred band, Lamb. With headspace from the project and solo endeavours achieved, they both shared a rejuvenated spirit about where they could take the band next. Once they returned to the studio under their own independent terms, they realised the tension and frustrations which caused the break no longer existed. Under a major label, they found themselves moving away from their initial, intimate aesthetic to more band-led direction. For their fifth album, 5, they stripped their sound back to its bare essentials; Rhodes’ songcraft and Barlow’s intricate production. The result was a record that was instantly recognisable as Lamb in its reflective lyrics and considered compositions, which was inherent to, and so special about their sound on the early releases.

Wasting no time with their renewed passion, Lou and Andy went straight back into the studio after 5, to record a new album. Released in October this year, Backspace Unwind is one of their most accomplished albums so far; featuring a more concentrated electronic sound, the two explore the idea of space (both the physical entity and mental capacity). Its songs question and cherish our existence and love in our lives, as they bring together digital sounds, string arrangements and Lou’s inimitable vocals. Andrew Darley spoke with Lou about the cosmic theme of the album, the early days of the band and the inseparable bond between herself and Andy.

First off, can I just say what a pleasure it is to have you back! Was there a sense of re-energisation between you after making 5, given the quick turnaround between it and Backspace Unwind?

Thank you! It’s great to be back. Yes, I think after the long break we had a kind of rebirth in making 5 and Backspace Unwind took that whole journey a stage further. There was such a flow whilst making this record.

You have both had solo careers and projects during the band’s interim. Do you feel these may have shaped the way you approached Lamb when you regrouped?

I think the split and our various solo experiences were incredibly important in bringing Lamb to the place we’re at right now. Back in 2004 when we split, apart from the fact that we weren’t getting on very well as people, the music we were making had got a little lost and confused. I was really feeling a need to move away from technology and make more stripped back acoustic music and I was trying to pull Lamb in that direction. Whilst writing Between Darkness and Wonder, the last album before the split, we had decided to include the live band in the process and quite often me, Oddur (guitarist) and Jonny (bass) would be jamming ideas and leaving Andy quite excluded. Of course, in retrospect this really didn’t work and in our new work we’ve realised that the essence of Lamb is Andy’s electronica and my songs and voice, in their stark contrast. I’ve been able to indulge my love of acoustic music elsewhere in my solo work and Andy’s had valuable experiences producing other artists which have fed into what we do now in a very positive way.

Space is a major theme that runs through Backspace Unwind; even though it has been a feature of your work before, it stands out more prominently here. What drew you to this theme?

It just seemed to happen. I was experimenting with a much more open-ended, abstract approach to song-writing on this album and, time and again, allusions to stars and planets and space would occur. Several times I worried about this becoming a repetition of these elements and then I just let go and realised that this was a theme that wanted to happen. For me, although the use of outer space imagery is important, the real emphasis is on the idea of space as an expanse or spaciousness in the music and lyrics. Literally the space between words and notes.

The album opens with ‘In Binary’, which has this very hard, almost industrial-like synthline. It’s instantly startling and captivating. How does it feel when you’ve had a creative moment like that in the studio – when you know you’ve captured something great on record?

Yeah, it was clear from early on that ‘In Binary’ had to be the opening track with that synth part as a kind of “clarion call” for the album. That synth part is almost angry-sounding and, in the lyrics and vocal I found myself creating a kind of smoothness to contrast with it. Often we don’t know what we’re onto at the time and then we play back the finished track and think “what the f***?!”.

There are several threads running through your music from classical, electronic, ambient to pop. Have your instruments and recording approach changed over the years? Are there any key pieces in creating your songs or just love playing?

One thing we’ve learned, especially over recent years and the last two albums, is that, although the technology available these days gives you an incredibly large palette of sounds to play with in the studio, it’s important to restrict this to what’s really needed in each track. When we made our first album we had such limited technology and there’s a sparseness to that record because of that which makes it a bit of a classic. With subsequent albums we’d had the chance to invest record company money in all manner of studio equipment and there was a tendency to want to use it all. When we re-formed to make 5 we spoke about how our sound had got over-complicated at times and decided to strip things back and keep it as raw as possible. This has been our ethos ever since. “Less is more” as they say.

You also created a special EP, Transfatty Acid EP, which reworks three very early songs of yours. With all the advancements in technology and digital production, do you ever think about how your previous work would be any different if you were to make them today?

It would definitely be different. I don’t think we’d want to touch our first album but we’ve spoken about re-working tracks from Fear of Fours. It was great fun reinventing ‘B-Line’ and it’s great to play live and ‘Transfatty Acid’ just evolved into that new version over the years of playing it live into a kind of monster.

Was there any song that was particularly tricky to write on this album, either for its content or technicality?

Nothing hugely challenging. There was an incredible flow to the process of making this record on the whole. ‘What Makes Us Human’ was perhaps the only slightly tricky song in that we wrote verses that we loved from the start but couldn’t quite get the chorus right. We nearly gave up several times but our love for the verses kept us returning to it and finally the chorus we have now emerged.

Across all your records, the lyrics have been quite philosophical and deep in observation, one example being ‘What Makes Us Human’. Similar to what I touched on the idea of space, were you trying write an aerial view of people and our humanity on this record?

Many of the space references are more about taking an aerial view; stepping outside of the day to day of our lives and observing it from a different space. Often, when I get really hung up on some problem or other in my life, or I’m struggling with one particular aspect, I love to air-lift my soul out a little and realise how small my life is amongst all lives on our planet and then in the cosmos and so on. It’s a humbling and inspiring thought.

Given that you’re a duo, you obviously have a unique bond that you can still happily create together after all this time. Does it feel like you’re in a great marriage, in that you can do the thing you love together?

I think we’re more like brother and sister than we have ever been. It’s funny, we’ve been through so much in all the years we’ve worked together. We’ve fought and then been each others’ greatest support. We know each others’ secrets and have probably known each other for longer than any romantic relationship either of us has had. It’s a very unique connection. A real blessing for sure.

Since the Internet and social media was in its amoebic stages when you emerged in the mid-’90s, how have you greeted its presence as a band when you regrouped?

It has been essential to our rebirth. When we started to talk about writing together again after the break we wanted to self-release our records but weren’t sure if our fanbase was still out there. Thanks to the wonders of social networking though we were able to tap into our existing fans and also to build from that. We need our fans now more than ever and it feels so much more honest to ask for their help in funding the recording process rather than a multi-national record company where you never know where the money’s coming from.

When recording or writing music, do you ever feel a pressure of what Lamb should sound like? Are you ever cognizant of your long-standing fanbase and their possible expectations?

I think that would be a mistake. We make the music we’re moved to make. Trying to second-guess our fanbase and what they want would be both confusing and somehow soul-destroying. To be honest our creative process is so open-ended that we never know where it’s going to end anyway.

Following on from that, have you ever felt a pressure to make “hits” or score in the charts, either now or in the early days?

It was certainly a big buzz to have the new album enter the UK Top 100 Albums and to be high up in the iTunes Electronic chart but that was because we’ve made music that didn’t compromise to get there. Back when we were signed to Universal/Mercury we were under constant pressure to make radio-friendly songs and hit singles and we fought them all the way. To us, our integrity was what mattered. Now, ironically, without any such pressure, our single ‘We Fall In Love’ is getting regular radio play and that feels really good. Maybe radio has caught up with us, rather than the other way around.

Now that you’re on your sixth album, do you have any personal favourites or songs from your back catalogue which hold a special meaning for you?

Ach, that’s always really difficult. Like choosing one of your children over another. We’ve written so many songs and some fade into the background whilst others stay important; their meaning changing with the ebbs and flows of life.

When you listen back to your debut or even Fear of Fours, is it like looking at an old photo-album of yourselves?

Yeah, that’s a good description. I don’t really listen to those albums much at all but recently Andy and I were doing a photo shoot in a studio in the East of London and we went into the local wholefood store who were playing our first album. It was really lovely to hear it after so long and to listen with a kind of detachment as if it was made by someone else. It was really cool to hear it in that way and the best thing was that it didn’t sound dated or old in the least.

On the expanded edition of Backspace Unwind, you’ve included a piano version of ‘As Satellites Go By’. Can it be difficult to choose between different versions/edits of a song?

That’s a special version and, since the song was written that way, literally with piano and voice, it’s good to have that version available almost as a preliminary sketch. The string version had to be the album choice but we still perform it in that stripped down way and it’s great to have the possibility of doing so.

How do you see Backspace Unwind in relation to your previous records?

Quite simply, the latest chapter. We love it, but then you always love your latest work.

Bands and artists who came out at the same time or after have come and gone, is there a sense of humbleness, or even pride, by the fact you’re still here creating today and that people are interested and invested in what you create?

Absolutely! I feel such a sense of gratitude that, not only are we still here creating music, but that we can still constantly surprise even ourselves and tear up the map at every step.

—

Backspace Unwind is out now through Strata. For more news about Lamb, visit their official website here. 

Future Islands Gig, Dublin

★★★★★
Future Islands
90 min • Vicar Street, Dublin • November 2nd, 2014
Andrew Darley reviews
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On their first of two nights in Dublin’s Vicar Street, there’s an electricity in the air before Future Islands take to the stage. A certain furore pervades the night as the Baltimore trio are now fighting with bigger weapons than the last time they played in Ireland. Brought on by early television promotion of their newest work, Singles, a commotion stirred around lead singer Samuel T. Herring’s distinctive performance style as their Late Show with David Letterman went viral. A spotlight finally shone on a band who have been grafting it for years. When they reach the stage, Herring is quick to recount the journey the band has been on to get to where they are today; listing the litany of venues they’ve played in Ireland – from the small clubs to seizing their current two night residency in the sizeable surroundings of Vicar Street. Whilst their sound has amassed over time, so too, has their following.

The band appear unfazed by the significant attention thrust upon them. From their opening ‘Back In The Tall Grass’, they deliver a mesmerising and engaged set with songs spanning their three recent records. Their synths are brought up loud, as their guitars and bass writhe with urgency. Although Herring’s early dance moves are merited with breakouts of applause, the zealous crowd soon settles in and the focus is strictly on the music.

What becomes clear from their live show is that they passionately embody the songs. From the get-go, the formidable frontman exists as a juggernaut; tearing across the stage, pulling at himself and berating his chest to his audience. He introduces several songs with their meanings, many of which are caring words for the broken-hearted. He urges “Don’t let anyone fuck with your heart” before bursting through the likes of ‘Long Flight’ and ‘Light House’. Their lyrics are of men firmly standing in the light, yet fully aware of the shadows that lie behind them. When Herring sings “I asked myself for peace”, it’s profound and captivating from a man giving everything he has to the crowd. His stamina and vocal backflips cuts through the plethora of indie bands who fail to grasp the concept of performance and showmanship.

They close out their performance with a four-song encore including the climaxes of 2009’s In The Evening Air with the feverish ‘Vireo’s Eye’ and the majestic throb of ‘Inch of Dust’. They are a ball of energy catapulted into an audience who were more than happy to reciprocate. They came in with determination and steely muscle that has been taught and trained by several years of hard work. As they send the Dublin crowd off into the night with the lullaby of ‘Little Dreamer’, it echoes the sentiment of their Twitter biography: “Too noisy for new wave, Too pussy for punk”. Future Islands are certainly walking a path quite distinctly their own.

Clementine introduces her new show at the BFI, Puppets at Christmas: Celebrating Puppets with Attitude!

The shorts of Antonio Da Silva combine elements of pornography, narrative and the art film. He talks to Michael Langan about poetry, porn and how in touch with his audience he is.

    (Click images to enlarge)

Antonio Da Silva makes short erotic films combining elements of pornography, narrative and the art film – they could as easily be shown in an art gallery as in the cinema. His work has been shown in film festivals around the world and he has a website dedicated to their dissemination, where people can pay to view them, and contact him with feedback and ideas for future projects. Recently, Fringe! Film Festival presented an evening of his work, as had Queer Lisboa, in his native Portugal, a few months before. His work has attained a certain status that being on the festival circuit affords and the aesthetic of voyeurism, well established in porn, seems to be in all of the films – the eroticism of watching and looking and peeping. Watching the films as a corpus, I began to ask myself certain questions: what the stories are that Antonio da Silva wants to tell, do they have anything to offer beyond the porn element, and do they even need that, what statements might he be trying to make? I got the chance to ask him these questions and more.

How do you categorise your films, or how do you see what you’re doing?

For me it’s a process and a journey. There are connections between the films and it’s a learning process also because they tell me what I should move towards. If they are too pornographic I should maybe try to make them more poetic, because we also need poetry. I want to have these questions that I have with myself, in the work too. My academic background is very mixed – I started in sound design, performance art, then moved on to dance film and fashion film – and now I want to put it all together. You can sense that in the way the films interact. I made a lot of art films before I started making the ones with explicit content. I wanted to put all the different elements together, as well as mixing my Portuguese background with my experience of living in London. It’s very much about myself, the things I desire, the things I want to see. 

And you have a very direct relationship with your audience, because of the website?

Very much so. I get feedback from the audience and they tell me they want to see. I originally put my films online so that people who don’t have access to film festivals can see them. Now, people can support me through paying to view them and it has become a very dynamic, organic, structure because my audience have become my clients, in a way. They communicate with me a lot, and I try to meet their needs. Some of them even offer to be in my films.

When you were making the transition into the kinds of films you’re making at the moment, did that feel like a big step for you? You’re exposing elements of your own sexuality, which seems like a brave thing to do.

For me it was just a part of the longer process and, actually, it was making my very first film that was the big step. I wanted to explore that part of my life, but now everyone is doing it – taking selfies and exposing themselves in a very straightforward way. I still want to protect many things in my life but I’m generally very open. My inner thoughts are in my films, and I don’t feel ashamed of any of them.

In Pix and also in Mates you examine the relationship between technology and sex – how technology enables sexual contact, but also stimulates and influences it too. Do you have a particular statement you want to make about that?

No, how you want to interpret my work is up to you. For me, nothing is bad in that, nothing is wrong. I try to bring positivity, even when there is sadness in my films. I have frustrations about many LGBT films I see, much of the porn I see, and art world mechanisms. There’s a statement, I suppose, about my frustration and desires, but nothing political, nothing judgmental. I’m trying to show some reality.

I think any discussion of your films should be taken out of a moral discourse. But maybe that is quite political in the widest sense because of the kind of activity that you show. In some ways the films are affirming of queer identity because they’re not mainstream and that can also be political in itself. Not to mention just the fact you show men’s bodies in the way you do, erections, ejaculations…

It has a bit of a didactic element, because many young people I know aren’t aware of this reality, so it has an ethnographic element. In pornography they are explicit and try to do narrative, and in cinema they are narrative and want to do explicit, but they can’t. These two worlds are so separate and there’s nothing in between. I want to be in that space.

Is there an aesthetic tension there?

It’s not a tension because they’re different elements I want to play with. I want to have elements of narrative, of pornography, of poetry, to be interested in and enjoy what I’m doing. I have to learn and experience something new with each film I make.

There are films that have more narrative than others – Julian for example, or Cariocas – and sometimes you have a voiced-over narrator, who is not you, so there’s a device there that separates the person holding the camera from the person speaking. It means there’s a character behind the camera, who then becomes a character in the action, and sometimes a participant in the activity. It creates complexity because you’re not just filming what you see, as a result of that comment and participation. How much are people aware of the camera, how much is set up?

Each film has a different approach, a different negotiation; there’s compromise, and respect and I’m also trying to understand that process in each situation. Sometimes things happen and I will say to the person, I have a camera with me and I would like what you just did to happen on camera. It becomes a mix of different layers and levels of observation. For example, Bankers is purely hidden camera. Generally, if you see a face there was consent, but if you don’t then the person allowed me to film them, but not show them. 

The editing in Dancers is so perfectly done that it’s like you’re watching the same solo danced by different people, and yet it was largely improvised.

This is a thing that happens in all my films – it’s a choreography made from editing. I’m very practised at that, I’ve trained myself in it over many years. My aesthetics are clearer so I’ve become very efficient at that editing now. 

You place the viewer, the audience, in the position of the voyeur. It’s not necessarily about being aroused, so the films can work on different levels. You can still be interested in what’s going on and can be as much about the erotic as well as being erotic. I found Cariocas interesting because of the narrative but also how the space changes at night, the people using the outdoor gym, so it takes on a dynamic about class and race. How conscious is that sort of thing in your work? 

Not very much. Again, it’s a process, and sometimes you have surprises like that. It’s my intuition and if I’m persistent enough something can suddenly happen.

There’s a certain amount of trust required because you’re in that space – the outdoor gym, for example – and you have a camera. You’re filming guys working out, in close-up sometimes. You must have to build up trust very quickly.

I explained to the guys that I was interested in their body language, and got their permission to film. Once the camera is set up, anyone who arrives after that knows it’s there, so I don’t have to explicitly ask permission after that point. It happens really naturally, but you have to make yourself one of them. I used that space to exercise myself – and I love that gym. I see the exercise not as a sexual thing but as choreography. I’m transforming their movements into choreography. I studied dance film and became interested in the question of how to make a dance film without using dancers. And now I’m interested in how I can make pornography without using porn actors.

Once you introduce a camera into a space – you said you wanted to show reality – you’re influencing reality. How self-consciously were those guys displaying their bodies, to each other, for themselves?

The moments I select in my editing are the ones where the person forgets the camera is there. If I see ‘acting,’ I won’t use that. That’s why in some of my films I show people leaving the moment after having sex, I’m interested in that afterwards moment. I can sense when the person forgets the camera and often that’s the bit I want. Even in Gingers, they knew the camera was there but they’re not talking to the camera they’re talking to me. It becomes something else.

Nowadays we’re so used to cameras, and quite sophisticated in our approach to technologies. Are you trying to cut through that? To capture authenticity and those moments when a lot of people’s defences are down?

It’s one of my main concerns. I also have issues with a lot of documentary work, in which everything is in place and lit beautifully, almost scripted. They’re pure fictions. I am frustrated by how reality is being presented and perceived. I like people to be authentic. I like most the person who doesn’t know they’re beautiful, but I also need narcissists to appear in my work. I play off both types of people and all these elements.

In both Gingers and Daddies you’re addressing questions around identity. These are quite often identities imposed on the subjects from outside, which are then perhaps embraced in some way. Did you have a particular statement you wanted to make about those specific identities, or are you interested in identity generally?

Well, I do have a bit of a fetish about gingers and I’m also interested in how I might be growing up as a person. I do want to learn about myself from my films. With Gingers I wanted to think about transforming something traditionally seen as negative into something good. With Daddies, I want to feel good about my own ageing, and looking my age, and look forward to being a daddy. It’s about accepting yourself. 

Your films are all relatively short and structurally similar. Do you have plans to extend them, and how do you see your process developing? 

I recently released extras from Bankers and people are loving it. How deep do people want to go into a subject? My audience can be obsessed with my subjects and I want to make films that answer their questions and show the process. I’m interested in making longer works, with more choreography, exposing my archive and how the footage came about. I want to keep improving, be inspired, and respond to people’s demands. My next project is about a cruising ground in Portugal, where I’m mixing up sounds and images that will define the film a lot. I’m also making a film about London and what it means to me. I’m interested in younger people and their use of the internet, the way people are promoting themselves. I want to keep surprising myself in my work and challenging my own life.

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You can see the uncensored trailers for Antonio’s films at his website here.

Broke With Expensive Taste

★★★★★
Azealia Banks
60:19 min • Prospect Park • November 6, 2014
John Preston reviews
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At the very least the dramatic and unexpected release of Azealia Banks’ debut album is a relief. Her one bona fide hit, the filthy and fantastic ‘212’, was released in 2011 and talk of her first album, mainly by Banks herself, has been on, off and on again pretty much consistently since then. Some 3 years later and Beyoncéd onto iTunes at 7.00pm on a cold Thursday in early November Broke With Expensive Taste finally saw the light of day. We can all now move on; Banks, the naysayers, the many she was horrified with brattish abuse via her volatile twitter account – let’s go and fix our glare on the new kid. Maybe the surprise then is that there is a lot more to Azealia Banks than being a big dirty mouthed one-hit wonder. The breadth and rush of the consistently surprising, eccentric but accessible tracks here is absolute proof that she knew what she was doing all along.

One of the most interesting and revealing aspects of Azealia Banks first full length release is all of the things that it is not. There is no EDM although this is most definitely a dance record, no dubstep, no grand-standing features and no sign of the kind of producers that eclipse the artist themselves and are usually called in for last minute emergencies. In fact the one track that was produced by and featured the ubiquitous Pharrell Williams (the lacklustre and generic ‘ATM Jam’) has wisely been left off. The Williams collaboration was forced upon Banks by her then record company (she has since left Interscope, to call it a rocky relationship would appear an understatement) to bag an easy hit as is often the case and by all accounts represents the reasons why Broke With Expensive Taste has suffered such a long and bumpy ride to release. Banks is not an artist who is not willing to comprise or curtail her artistic impulses and this is made abundantly clear here.

Album opener ‘Idle Delilah’ has clattering pots and pans percussion, a fuzz-box island guitar riff and a chorus, if it can indeed be called that, that consists only of a chopped-to-utter-smithereens Brandy sample from her hit ‘I Wanna Be Down’ which is rendered utterly unrecognisable here. This is to support Banks warbling but radiant rap and vocal lines laid out over a building house beat. ‘Desperado’ and ‘Gimme a Chance’ go down different roads entirely. The former has Banks speeding sulkily over an old and moody MJ Cole 2-step track ‘Bandelero Desperado’ with muted trumpet and an unmistakeable British identity whilst ‘Gimme A Chance’ references early hip hop scratching and a Ze Records ‘Off the Coast of Me’ dead – eyed and sung chorus. This all comes before the second half of the track which explodes into Latin American horns with Banks both singing and rapping in Spanish. ‘JFK’ is a snooker balls-cracking house track with vocal inflections mimicking an almost operatic narrative of the vogue balls and creative rivalry and’ Wallace’ has dark cavernous drums, a blink and you’ll miss it Missy Elliot reference and might be about a dog. At this point it is hard to accept that the album has not even reached its half-way point, such is the diversity and ambition that is alluded to.

The album’s middle section is its most conventional and traditionally urban, all of the tracks are rapped. ‘Ice Princess’ in particular, which is a variation on Morgan Page’s ‘In The Air’ hit, proves that Banks can more than hold her own in commercial rap; her rhymes are effortless and engaging, often surreal, with a flow that is sharp but soothing. ‘Soda’ is a popping, taut house track that sounds like little else coming out of the urban genre or any other stable at the moment and is completely sung in Banks highly distinctive swooping – and occasionally flat – baritone. It introduces the last act of the album and at this point some of the admittedly unexpected flow of the first half does suffer, due mainly to ‘Nude Beach a Go-Go’. Produced by Ariel Pink with an intense love or loathe quality, it sounds like a Beach Boys carol about the joys of nude beaches (‘Do you jingle when you dingle-dangle? Everybody does the bingle-bangle’) as imagined by the B 52s who already have a song called ‘Theme for A Nude Beach’. It is quite a lot to take in and is probably brilliant but is jarringly sandwiched between the album’s deepest house tracks, the alluring triptych of ‘Luxury’, ‘Miss Camaraderie’ and ‘Miss Amour’.

The decision to include older tracks here, including ones already featured in Banks 2012 Fantasia mixtape (and yes, ‘212’ is also here), is the only misstep that hinders Broke With Expensive Taste’s’ irresistible freshness. Not only are they the weaker tracks in the majority but they overload the track listing to 16 and subsequently dilute the potential power of the lesser heard and superior material. The real surprise here though is that Azealia Banks could not get this album released in the first place, this is the stuff that classic debut albums are made and is massive indictment of the state of the music industry in 2014. An unreserved success still, with Broke With Expensive Taste Azealia Banks has ably demonstrated that the fight was most definitely worth it and has emerged out of the other side as an important, original and necessary artist.

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Walter Beck goes on the road with a journal in hand to cover the Miss and Mr. Gay pageant at the Indiana State University.

“Shaved her legs and then he was a she,
She says, ‘Hey, babe,
Take a walk on the wild side.’” –Lou Reed

“King for a day, princess by dawn
Just wait ’til all the guys get a load of me…” –Billie Joe Armstrong

I fell into this story almost by accident. Nick (aka Nikki Saint-Queer) asked if I could help him out with some publicity for his upcoming drag show, Miss and Mr. Gay ISU. He just wanted a Facebook post or something, but I said to hell with that and invited him on my radio show The Rainbow Asylum.

After his appearance on the air, I knew one of us was going to have to be at the show as a representative of the show and it would have to be me since my co-host lives in Phoenix.

With me slated to go to the show anyway, I mentioned it to Bryon at Polari. With the amount of stress I had been under at work and the personal mess I was in, Bryon suggested that I cover the show as Polari’s Gonzo Correspondent to the Colonies. I needed a weird gig to take my mind off things.

Photos courtesy of Tanya Starcher and Breawna Renee (Click images to enlarge)

The stars had aligned and the gods were smiling, so I started getting the details and necessary credentials taken care of.

Getting the credentials and details ironed out proved to be a greater challenge than I expected. I wasn’t worried about whether or not Polari would take the story. Bryon trusts my talents completely, which is a bit frightening, he knew all he had to do was turn me loose on whatever scene I was heading to and I would send him the results.

The press credentials were a bit harder. My connection for this story was an old friend from Indiana State, Nick Penington; he was in Head Chair of the committee that put on Miss Gay ISU pageant, so I went to him to get the necessary credentials and other items to go into this mess. He was more than willing to give me whatever access I wanted, but there was a certain reservation in his voice. Nick and I have known each other for years and he knows that I have a strong crazy streak in me. It works great on a picket line, but Nick was worried how well it would work on a story about one of the biggest productions he’s ever taken on.

He kept saying “Don’t slander us.” I don’t think he was worried too much about slander; I would be going into an event with a strongly sympathetic crowd. I think he was worried that I would do something off the wall just for the jolly hell of it. Go backstage with a head full of amyl nitrate and start giggling uncontrollably at the drag queens or sneak a pint of Wild Turkey into the venue, down it, and start drunkenly hassling the crowd, shoving my tape machine in their faces, demanding they denounce Governor Pence on the record. Nick wouldn’t put that past me.

But I assured him that I would maintain myself for the event. The story would be weird no doubt, but there wouldn’t be anything in it I couldn’t defend later. The Indiana Statesman would be there and they would take the straight journalism angle, print the winner’s name and picture and the usual babbling press clipping you send home to mom. I was going in as the gonzo journalist, a representative of the largest digital queer arts rag in the UK.

The real challenge was getting the necessary time off work to cover this properly. When I sent in my time off sheet, the floor boss got ugly with me and started threatening my job, insisting that the supervisor would fire me for requesting the time off. I gave her the time off sheet anyway, to hell with it. I hadn’t been on the scene armed with a notebook and tape machine since May and if they wanted to play heavy with me, I was ready. If it meant losing my job to cover this story, it was a necessary expense.

With the total access secured and the day off relatively sure, I got together the necessary materials and headed west towards Terre Haute.

I arrived on campus after nearly getting into a car wreck on the way there, feeling momentarily as though this story was cursed from the beginning.

The drag pageant was in University Hall, a bigger venue than the last pageant I had been to. Nick told me the crowds had gotten too big for it to be in the student union. So they had moved on up, filling up the big theater in University Hall.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived was a disclaimer, absolving Indiana State and Spectrum from any and all responsibilities for any crass shenanigans that may happen on stage. It seemed weird, it was a drag show, it was supposed to be risqué. I asked Nick about it and he said it was necessary, some lady had asked about bringing her grandkids, so they had to make sure the show was relatively clean.

Nick was certainly nervous before show time, running around frantically trying to get everything set and ready before the doors opened at 6:00. He also seemed nervous about his performance, he said he hadn’t performed in six months and didn’t know how it would go over.

With Nick dashing all over the place, I started wondering amongst the small crowd of set-up people and ran into Keisha Von Lord, a local heavy in the drag circuit. She told me how happy she was about being in the British press and demanded a British husband, telling me that Polari’s readers should find her one.

The backstage area became more frantic as the clock ticked down, a thousand different things going on at once. Some chick offered drinks; I said I’d take a Pepsi. I could have done with some Wild Turkey, but under the circumstances, Pepsi was fine.

The people in the backstage area seemed concerned about their reps, even in this new frontier of social and political acceptance, they’re still worried about pushing their act too far.

It became a bit of an uncomfortable scene for a street-fighting writer to work in.

It was a sympathetic crowd, no doubt, but I didn’t see any serious action freaks; nobody that seemed willing to commit random acts of weirdness in the name of queer anarchy just for the sole purpose of freaking out any normies in the crowd.

Professionalism is the rallying cry now, a true testament to the slickness of the digital age.

Maybe it’s the final stage of the Movement. Kids born into a world where acceptance is the norm and serious opposition is the exception, chalked up to bad luck.

One of the judges seemed to be more on my level, saying, “If it’s not slander, it’s not fun.”

At around 5:30, my coffee wore off, so I accepted a couple of generic caffeine pills from somebody in the group. I couldn’t collapse from exhaustion with door time less than half an hour away.

I had the best seat in the house reserved and went into the theater for the show to begin.

Keisha was the MC for the gig, getting the crowd riled up before the first entertainment started. The entertainment would be local drag queens, Nikki Saint-Queer, Eve DePuss, Cheryl Teasman, and of course, Keisha. These native bigwigs would provide the intermission for the actual competitors to be ready for their performances.

Nikki St. Queer opened up the show, strutting out like a motherfucker as the crowd went completely apeshit. It was to be her last performance, an epitaph for Miss Gay ISU 2013 and she wanted to start her last gig off with a bang.

After Nikki, Eve and Keisha performed a couple of numbers. They were much more subdued in their performances, working ballads and bluesy numbers. That’s not to say they weren’t loud and outrageous in their own ways. Eve came strutting down that stage looking like the strange bastard offspring of the patron saint of drag, Divine.

With the crowd properly warmed up by the performances of the local bigwigs, it was time for the competition itself to begin. The first part would be the talent portion of the gig, where the contestants would try their hands at whatever numbers they picked.

Most of the contestants followed the time-honored tradition of miming along to a chosen song, although one contestant, Jackie Von Lord, added her own twist by using a second person laying on the stage covered in blood. The song itself was in Japanese, but between the blood and the over-the-top performance, it’s something Ed Wood would have been proud of.

The highlight of the talent portion came from one of the king contestants, Maxwell Styles, who instead of miming to a song, went out on stage with an acoustic guitar and did a rendition of Green Day’s “Good Riddance”. It was one the rare shines of something truly original during the talent portion.

Following closely behind Maxwell was Charlie, who while still using a back-up tape, still actually sang his song.

After the talent portion, Keisha called an intermission. I made a beeline for the door to smoke a cigarette and see if I could catch any interesting jabber amongst the crowd. One group got into a serious discussion about who would win the competition, if it would come down to the enthusiasm of the amateurs or the polished strut of the competitors who had done drag before. They were talking like serious track buffs before post time at a horse race. I started wondering if anybody was betting on the outcomes or even if maybe I should have laid some money down myself.

The intermission was over and it was time to get back to the theater for the next rounds of entertainment and competition.

It was round two of entertainment from the bigwig queens and Nikki opened up the second part as well. She came strutting out in red sparkles and black leather to the tune of this driving heavy bass pop number. She looked sweeter than the darkest sin.

Cheryl was next up and her performance turned into a comedy of errors, the sound guys kept getting the tapes mixed up, cueing up the wrong songs. But she went along with it, delivering a crass performance, fucking with the audience, making crude gestures. She was saying to hell with the disclaimer and Jesus, the crowd ate it up.

It was time to bring the constants up for the next part and it was the Evening Wear portion. Keisha had lost her notes on the contestants’ get-up, so she improvised; casually commenting on what each constant was strutting out in. The queens showed off the usual line of evening gowns, sparkles, glitter and plenty of accessories. The kings strutted out a little finer, with Charlie in particular showing off a suit and top hat that looked like something out of an early 90’s King Diamond show.

We had one last round of entertainment and competition before the judges would render their verdicts.

Q&A sessions were next for the contestants with Keisha improvising her questions. While Keisha may have shown her knack for working off the cuff, but the contestants stuttered and stammered their way through most of the answers. It seemed to be a bit of a wash, with no contestant really coming out swinging during the session. Maybe if they had been less concerned with the judges and answered out of pure instinct, it would have been better.

Tensions in the crowd rose as the contestants left the stage, it was the last part, judgments would be coming soon.

The final entertainment began with Nikki Saint-Queer’s requiem for her drag career. She hadn’t performed in six months and this would be her last number. She worked a ballad on stage, closing it out like a queen. Even though the performance was mimed, she made that entire crowd feel every note. Some guy sitting two seats down from me began silently weeping; Nikki wiped the kid’s tears from his face, smearing his eyeliner.

The judges were ready and the winners were announced. Jazzmain won Miss Congeniality, the skinhead girl Scarlett took the title of Miss Gay ISU, and Charlie took Mr. Gay ISU. There were roars from the crowd and a few murmurs of dissent.

The show was over, I was hoping to corner the winners and get them to babble something into my tape machine. But Nick told me to head over to ZimMarss for the unofficial after party.

I gathered my notebook and tape machine and headed off to the bar.

I got to the bar right as it was opening and asked the bartender for a frosty mug of Budwesier. I sat there, sipping the lonely beer, and watching some of the queens starting to trickle in. I should have been more focused, but 24 hours without food was starting to show. I could have done with another round of caffeine pills, but I didn’t see anybody offering any and my own stash of Stacker 3s were in my black satchel.

The vibe of the bar started getting a bit ugly with various people chiming in with their thoughts on the judges’ decisions; I could get a general sense of brewing anger. But I couldn’t pick out the specifics. Besides, I didn’t really want to know, I just wanted to drink my beer and unwind for a few minutes before the second show of the night started.

Nick finally arrived and after a cigarette, we hustled into the showroom, watching the usual cast of regulars strut on the stage. The crowd was much more relaxed than they had been on campus, most of them had been working tirelessly, going without food or sleep for the past 24 to 48 hours and they were anxious to let their hair down and get into some serious drink.

The crowd held up dollar bills for the performers. The only one I held up a dollar for was a male stripper named Eros. I was starting to crash and the temptation of a cut young man in a jockstrap was too much to resist, so I slipped a dollar into his jock and let him tease a lonely journalist for a few minutes.

Nick and I dodged out of the bar at around 1:00, he was tired and I was tired. I let him drive since the beer and Jack Daniels were making my head reel a little bit, combined with no food.

It finally ended at around 2:00 AM; Nick and I had Rally’s and then collapsed from pure exhaustion.

I woke up early on instinct, momentarily confused about where I was.

Then it hit me, I was free again, if only temporarily. I was crashed out on a recliner in the cheap apartment of an old friend. I wasn’t locked up in some cold gray factory, getting covered in red ink and cursing my existence.

I was free. I was alive.

We catch up with Bright Light Bright Light to talk about his new single ‘Everything I Ever Wanted’ which has been re-recorded and released as a charity single raising money for Elton John’s Aids Foundation.

The wonderful Bright Light Bright Light has recorded a new version of his track ‘Everything I Ever Wanted’ with the Pink Singers, London’s oldest LGBT choir, in aid of EJAF as part of World AIDS Day next week. The song has an inherently choral element to it and is the perfect platform for the Pink Singers to shine with their soaring harmonies. The once melancholic, yet optimistic lean on the aftermath of a break-up has now become a bright beacon of hope with a sense of communion for everyone affected by HIV and AIDS around the world.

It’s been brilliant following #rodtrip as you have travelled the world with Elton John on his current tour. What have been the highlights?

Oh my god so many … Hanging out with and watching my hero play every night and getting to speak French at our three french dates and meeting some really incredible people. My stage highlight is the crowd at Lille SCREAMING after songs and clapping along to the whole of ‘Moves’. It was really special.

The song “Everything I Ever Wanted” seems the perfect platform for the Pink Singers with its inherent choral element. What made you choose this song for World AIDS day and EJAF?

It’s a song about care and protecting someone so they achieve the best they can, so thematically it’s the best song for the day, but also I really wanted full chorals on it so it seemed the best choice! And I’m so proud of how the Pink Singers performed on it.

There has been some controversy recently surrounding Rose McGowan and Zachary Quinto chastising some of the gay community for being short-sighted and complacent. What would you like to see change?

I haven’t personally read either of their statements so this is not directed at them, but I’d like to see less segregation and international accusations within the gay community. Simply having a non-heterosexual orientation doesn’t mean that you all have the same experience so I think rather than berate how people deal with their own sexuality, mixing with their personality and beliefs, deal with your own and be a better person for it, then you’ll most probably understand someone else’s struggles and positions when you’ve dealt with your own. 

What are your thoughts on the Twin Peaks redux?

I’m both excited and terrified for any more Twin Peaks story … I am obviously a huge fan of the show (I use one of Laura Palmer’s screams as a drum beat in Feel It, which is based on her diary), but I love it so much I’m on edge about anything else as I’m sure many lifelong fans are!

What are your plans for Christmas?

I’ll be in New York with some good friends while rehearsing for my New Years show with Elton in NYC!

Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?

Work harder and have even more fun doing the work.

“Life Is Easy” had a bittersweet optimism at its core. What will be the third album’s emotional arc?

Depends what happens to me between now and January when I start working on it! I imagine travelling might have something to do with it. I’ve been on the road since June!

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You can buy the single ‘Everything I Ever Wanted’ from iTunes now.

Frontman of Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys speaks exclusively to Polari about his debut album, Toy. 

After a chance meeting with Pawel Grudzien in 2008 at a less than glamorous gig in a dive bar in Dublin, Jaime Nanci invited him to join his lounge-punk band on a brief tour culminating in a late night sing song around a broken down piano. Enraptured by Pawel’s spontaneous talent on keys; at about 4AM that morning, they wrote their first song together. One year later, Nanci was introduced and recruiting bassist Dave Redmond and Kevin Brady – Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys were born.

On their debut album, Toy, the Irish quintet have crafted songs inspired by actual events with a sound they describe as “the lost pages of a film noir script populated by beautiful losers, gun slingers and after hours dancing marionettes”. The album weaves together threads from jazz, blues, punk and pop, whilst being the enigmatically eccentric frontman. Jaime gave Polari an elaborate insight into each of the songs on Toy; a record wielding a triumphantly unique sound, stories of near death and odes to queer culture.

‘Cassanova Street’

This is a slightly surreal tango. It’s a love song to Barcelona, and one trip in particular I took with my husband which inspired the lyrics. From our little boutique hotel to the backrooms and go-go boys – the song is a queer holiday journal of sorts. 

‘Fearless’

This is a very personal song, I wrote it for my father, but I think it is loaded with many layers of emotions that lots of gay boys have about their fathers.

‘The Isle of Misfit Toys’

This is an ode to Fire Island and all the queer men who fell in the first wave of the HIV and AIDS crisis. Its a beautiful sad ballad full of smutty innuendo, its got drag queens, snoring lesbians, and nudity; everything a gay resort needs!

‘Beautiful Feeling’

I wanted this to be an upbeat tune. It was the first time I actively made myself sit down and write a song. It’s frivolous and over the top song about falling in love, because thats how you feel when you do.

‘Grey Gardens’

This is my effort to get inside the head of Little Edie Beale, there are some direct quotes and references to some of the visuals that stuck with me after seeing the documentary for the 50th time.

‘Take Me To The Market’

I think it’s quite baroque in its melodrama. We played a show at this underground Vaudeville type club that descended into bedlam and debauchery. It really felt like travelling back in time to a liquor soaked opium-scented madhouse. I wrote the words in one sitting and gave them to Pawel and he said the music just popped into his head as soon as he read them.

‘Noni’s Got A Gun’

This song is about a time when I was touring in the States with my old band Cuckoo Savante. After one pretty insane night with these amazing friends who I was lucky enough to work with for ten years, I ended up on the roof of a warehouse with a gun pointed at my head by a handsome young mafiosa who thought I was trying to entrap him. I don’t think I should say anymore about that one.

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For more information about Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys, visit their official website here.

Andrew Darley introduces the synthpop outfit, Scale Model.

 (Click images to enlarge)

The songs on Scale Model’s debut album Star are written out of a love of new wave music and synthpop. Based in Tennessee, the band came together when singer-keyboardist Megan Rox and guitarist Dave Johnson relocated from their hometown of Chicago in 2009 to Nashville and established the current lineup. With a self-titled EP released in 2012, the band quickly got to work on the first full-length, Star. The band point to the likes of Blondie, Metric and The Cardigans as their references, as they mix guitar pop melodies, beats and synthesizers. Andrew Darley chatted with the band to talk about the deluxe version of Star, Megan’s work as a spiritual life coach and how it is not mutually exclusive to the band’s music.

Let’s go back to the start, how did you all meet each other and become Scale Model?

Megan: Dave and I started the band in Chicago where I grew up (we were dating at the time, we’re married now). When we moved to Nashville (5 years ago), I met Steve when we were both volunteers for the Teen Rock camp.

When you started, were there any bands or musicians that you all mutually loved and made you want to make your own?

Steve: I think all of us have always been big fans of The Smiths, Depeche Mode, and New Order. But Meg and Dave formed Scale Model long before I joined. Their influences were a little different at the time.

How did you reach the name Scale Model? Were there any other contender’s for the band’s name?

Megan: Not a very interesting story unfortunately. We couldn’t decide on a name and when we had booked our first show we realized we really needed to come up with a name, so Dave threw out the name Scale Model and we all said, “Yeah, sure, it’s better than anything else we’ve come up with”.

How would you describe the music you make to someone who has never heard your work before?

Megan: Dark synth pop/rock with electro, disco and 80s influence. And a bit of a Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Metric vibe.

Steve: Thoughtful, yet fun power pop. If Blondie, Metric, and New Order all cross-pollinated, you might get something like Scale Model.

How did you write this album? Did you write collectively or sometimes as individuals?

Steve: Mostly collectively. Dave and Megan come up with the basic chords and melodies, and then bring it to the rest of the band to come up with the rhythm and feel, then we all work on an arrangement and flesh out the parts.

Megan: Writing the lyrics is usually the last thing I do because I’m not very good at it. I come up with the vocal melody first. 

What’s the meaning behind the album’s title, Star?

Megan: It’s based off one of the songs on the album, “You Can Be A Star,” about encouraging people that “you can be a star if you follow who you truly are”. 

Steve: We also share a fascination with space and stars, galaxies, etc. Our bass player at the time just threw it out there and it stuck.

Did you face any challenges making this album? If so, how did you overcome them?

Steve: I’d say the biggest challenge was time commitments of the band members, plus that of Jeremy, our tracking engineer, and Matt, our mix engineer. It caused the process to be pretty slow from start to finish. It was worth it though! To overcome it, we really just had to learn patience on whole new level. 

Are you happy with how the album turned out?

Steve: This album is one of the greatest pieces of creative work that I’ve ever been a part of. In fact, it’s probably THE greatest that I’ve been a part of to date. Megan and Dave feel the same way.

Do you have jobs outside of the band? How do you manage the two?

Megan: Yes. I am an adjunct professor so I can pick my class schedule every semester and be flexible. I’m also working on building a life coaching/motivational speaker career. Needless to say I don’t have much free time. Dave owns a guitar shop here in Nashville called Scale Model Guitars where he builds and repairs guitars for many musicians and bands in our local music scene.

Steve: We all do. I work a regular day job at a large company that’s based in Nashville. For all of us it’s a sacrifice to use a huge part of our vacation time for touring, but it’s something that we’re all ok to do at this point in our lives/careers. But it is a lot more difficult than say, a band of 22-year-olds who can deliver pizzas for a living and then jump in a touring van for months at a time and not have to worry about it. Sometimes it does seem like the system is rigged against normal adults who want to be successful at playing music at least on a part-time level.

What are your live shows like? From the photos on Facebook, they look pretty intense!

Megan: Yeah, Dave and I like to really let loose!

Steve: We put a lot of effort and thought into making our live show memorable. We’ve added lasers, a fog machine, floodlights, and LED light-up guitars built by our guitarist/luthier Dave. But the only real way to know what it’s like is to come see for yourself.

You held a remix competition for the deluxe edition of the album. Was it strange for your work to be interpreted by other people?

Megan: It was awesome for me to hear what other people did with my vocal parts! It’s like a new song.

Steve: I’m a fan of electronic music in general, so the world of remixes is very familiar to me. So it wasn’t strange at all for me to hear other artists’ interpretations. It was really exciting actually!

‘Live It Up’ is obviously a song about being young, having a good time and getting drunk. But I’m wondering, does it also take on the hipster scene that we find ourselves loathing and regrettably sometimes buying into?

Megan: Oh yes, it’s mostly influenced by our neighbourhood, East Nashville. One of the popular hangouts for late-night karaoke is a redneck divebar. The last time I was there some guy was talking about just getting out of jail. Who doesn’t like making fun of hipsters and crazy dive bars?

Steve: I think it does, in a very light-hearted/joking way. It’s really about not taking yourself too seriously in the end. But that’s just my interpretation of Meg’s lyrics. Interestingly enough, Matt Mahaffey (who mixed Star) wrote a song much more directly about the hipster scene with his band Self. Check it out on their new EP Super Fake Nice. It’s called ‘Hey, Hipster!’. 

I’ve read that Megan is a motivational speaker, particularly for young women living in small towns and coming out and being yourself. How and why did you get involved in this?

Megan: Yes, I’m on a spiritual journey. I am a spiritual life coach and in order to get out of a long-term depression I had to do some soul searching. I discovered my true authentic self and have learned to love all parts of myself and found the confidence to express that through performing in my band. I struggled with self-esteem and confidence issues and depression for much of my 20s. Since I’ve been teaching college, I find a soft spot in my heart for those struggling with that tumultuous period between the ages of 18 and 28. I won’t go on a rant about how our culture and media in the U.S. perpetuates negative body image ideals that influence all of us, especially young women. I believe strongly in encouraging people, of any age, to find and follow their true authentic selves, regardless of acceptance or approval of others.

Did you feel a sense of obligation to do this, since your own journey in finding your own voice that could potentially help others?

Megan: I like to think of it as a calling. My spirit is leading me to help other people find their own voice and step outside our culture’s narrow box of what’s considered normal. It’s not surprising that I resonate with LGBT people since that’s exactly what they’ve had to go through. I sing in Nashville’s LGBT choir, Nashville In Harmony. I’m constantly inspired by my colleagues and their confidence and courage as well as acceptance of everyone.

Have you learnt anything about yourself in doing it? Any moments that stand out in your mind?

Megan: I’m always learning about myself because, as an aspiring motivational, spiritual (non-religious) speaker, I am always looking inward and looking to my spirit and soul for guidance, since that’s the basis of what I ask my life coach clients and workshop students to do.

The idea self-empowerment carries over to your music, particularly on a song like ‘Do It Tonight’. It urges not to wait till tomorrow and to do what you want now. Has there ever been instances when you found yourself putting your life on hold?

Megan: Ha, yes. I have had a lot of fear in my life, like most of us, and was afraid to take steps toward what I felt in my heart I should do because society and others say it’s not the “logical” or “realistic” or even “feasible” thing to do. I’ve learned to not let other people be the GPS of my life. And, fear of failure is something that stops many people from even trying something. It’s fear that causes us to procrastinate. I have a blog post that details this theory – manifestingrockstardom.blogspot.com 

What do you want Scale Model to become? Have you got any goals you have in mind?

Megan: I just love writing music and performing it for people. Because I love the energy exchange I feel with the audience when there are a LOT of people, I’d love to be able to play in front of thousands of people some day.

Steve: I want to make music that I personally enjoy both playing and listening to. And I want to play that music for people and experience the awesome energy of playing live in front of a few hundred or more people. And I want this band to become a self-sustaining endeavor that gives us a part-time income. Anything beyond that is a bonus.

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Star is available to buy now through their Bandcamp page. For more news and info about the band, visit their website.